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The original site was designed by Mikko Hyppönen and deployed by Henrik Rydberg. It was later upgraded extensively by Dan Balis. The current layout was designed by S. Abbas Raza, building upon the earlier look, and coded by Dumky de Wilde.

Monday, September 10, 2012

On Cursing

By Tom Jacobs and Troy Hatlevig

Profanity is the
crutch of the inarticulate.

~
anonymous

Fuck you, you fucking fuck.

~
Joe Pesci, in Goodfellas

I curse a lot. I seem
to drop the f-bomb more frequently than most, and I’m not sure why this
is. I like the word and the way that it
adverbializes or adjectivizes things in ways that most adverbs or adjectives
don’t.[i] And it
accentuates a thought like few other words can.
I recall that one of my best friends growing up had an older brother, a
true black sheep of the family—drugs, alcohol, county lock up, and so forth—and
whenever his father referred to him, he never called him by his name (which
I’ll say is Larry). He never said, when
things went South for his son, “ah, that Larry.” He always said, “ah, that fucking
Larry.” This seems right and true and
appropriate. There’s just no other
locution that will convey the sentiment.

There are many excellent curse words. Used to be that “douchebag” was the word of
choice when describing an irritating or pretentious person (or, if modified to
“douchebaggy”) an adjective to describe something overwrought or transparently
depthless. Then it became “douchenozzle.” I’m not sure what’s replaced it, but I think
the internet has had a role. When confronted
with the incomprehensible, sometimes profanity is the only response.

***

No matter what,
though, you still can’t really swear in front of your mom. Or, to be more
precise, you can swear in front of your mom, but you can’t swear well. For
example, one method of swearing well is by using purposeful offhandedness, as
in, “so I asked the fuckin guy where his fuckin car was.” You might say that to
your mom when telling her your funny story about the douchenozzle from the mall
parking lot, but you won’t tell it in an offhanded way.

***

Swearing in front of your parents is a bit like smoking in
front of them: embarrassing and humiliating and somehow dehumanizing to both parties. But still, there is an assertion of self
there somewhere. Cursing in a most
general kind of way is an assertion of self.

There is a peculiar thrill in cursing in front of people we
shouldn’t (our parents, our students, our loved ones). But still, cursing rises like a dark light to imprism our behavior (both perceived and meant) on life’s stage. There is something about cursing well…about
knowing how to deploy curse words to maximum effectiveness…that speaks volumes
about your position in the larger scheme of things. Either you’ve
plumbed or not; either you’ve worked construction or not. Either you have worked a blue collar job or
not. And it is in the blue collar arena
that the best swearing occurs.

Either to shock, or to generate some kind of fraternal
resonance, or to simply act as a shibboleth…both you and I know this word, and
I’m deploying it for a particular effect (to make you like me, to make you
think I’m cool, or to settle the dust that’s been kicked up merely by meeting),
cursing has a key role in our theatrical lives.

***

The TV series
Battlestar Galactica changed the word “fucking” into “frakking”. I remember
watching one scene in which rogue pilot Starbuck says “frakking” in front of
one of the priests, causing me to suck in my breath and start looking for an
exit from the room. Until I remembered that not only is she not my friend but a
TV actress, not only did she not swear in front of an actual priest but just an
actress playing one, in fact, she didn’t even actually swear.

***

Cf. The American Pie
poster. Or these two youtube clips.

http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/cork-soakers/280265

These are texts that make it clear that there are open secrets that bind each of us together in peculiar skeins, things that can't be said but that are always said that make us all feel like part of a community. We get the joke and giggle. This is important.

***

And of course there is poetry in profanity. Anyone who doubts it has never read or seen a
David Mamet play. See Exhibit one below
(“what’s your name?” “what’s my
name? fuck you, that’s my name. you know
why? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here and I drove a 80,000 dollar BMW to
get here tonight,” etc:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCf46yHIzSo

Cursing is beautiful, it extends the horizons of
expression, and perhaps most of all, it provides a kind of profane pleasure. And here’s the thing: the fuckin’ clock tells
me that I’m late on submitting this essay.
Well, we all do the best we can with the fuckin’
life we’ve been allotted. And I have to go get in my Hyundai and drive to work. That's my name.

P.S. Here’s a matrix from Nicholson Baker’s “Leading with
the Grumper” about how to mix prefixes with suffixes to purposeful and
hilarious effect. I have only added “jockey”
to the mix, but I think there might be many, many more prefixes and suffixes to help us all out in our daily work
of cursing to express and make it through the day with a bit of elan and panache. I invite any additions to columns or
rows. I would massively appreciate it, actually,
and will try to keep a grid that perhaps I will publish as it grows (that’s
what she said, by the way…)

From Leading with the
Grumper

You

Bag!

Ball!

Bomb!

Wad!

Wipe!

Loaf!

Jockey!

Cheese-

X

?

?

?

Corn-

X

?

?

Dirt-

X

X

X

Grease-

X

Hose-

X

X

?

Jiz-

X

X

X

?

Scum-

X

X

X

Scuzz-

X

X

X

X

Sleaze-`

X

X

X

X

Slime-

[i] I
rarely use it as a verb, although I have always been embarrassingly fond of a
story Sean Penn tells about when he used to go out to clubs with Jack
Nicholson. Two women approached them and
one of them asked Jack whether he wanted to dance. He responded (and you have to imagine
Nicholson’s grainy slow voice here) by saying “wrong verb.” So it can be used effectively, if a bit
creepily. But still.